In April, 2012, as part of the effort to draw attention to the growing burden of road traffic injuries, the Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit (JH-IIRU) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health launched “Public Health Burden of Road Traffic Injuries: An Assessment from Ten Low- and Middle-Income Countries”, a special issue of Traffic Injury Prevention. The launch coincided with a midday seminar at the Bloomberg School in Baltimore, Maryland, which features panelists from the World Health Organization and the Global Road Safety Partnership.
The JH-IIRU is dedicated to reducing those rates of road traffic injuries around the world. Led by Adnan A. Hyder, MD, PhD, MPH, in 2010, JH-IIRU joined a consortium of six partners, including the World Health Organization, the Global Road Safety Partnership, the Association for Safe International Road Travel, EMBARQ and the World Bank to evaluate and implement road safety solutions in 10 countries that account for nearly half (48%) of all traffic deaths globally. Dubbed the Road Safety in 10 Countries project (RS-10), this five-year undertaking is generously funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, making it the largest international road safety initiative to date.
The goal of RS-10 is to save lives by providing evidence for stronger road safety interventions around the world. But Hyder and his team recognize that a greater awareness of the impact of road traffic injuries is key to getting decision makers and policymakers involved. This landmark publication, which includes 11 scientific papers jointly authored with 50 colleagues from JH-IIRU and their in-country collaborators, as well as the WHO, highlights new and aggregate data collected and analyzed in the 10 participating countries during the first two years of the RS-10 project. The papers range from investigating the rising trend of pedestrian and motorcycle passenger mortality in Brazil to examining the projected economic impact of the RS-10 project to reviewing national data sources of road traffic injuries in China.
Margie Peden, PhD, BScMed, BSc, coordinator of Unintentional Injury Prevention in the Department of Violence, Injury Prevention and Disability at the World Health Organization, stresses the importance of the work being done. “This type of monitoring and evaluating data from RS-10 project countries will provide essential evidence from low- and middle-income countries on what works and how many lives can be saved.”
While road safety issues have recently begun garnering more attention, much more work is needed. This special issue brings to light the under-recognized burden of road traffic injuries even as it represents important strides in road safety research.
To see the complete note please go to
http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2012/hyder_special_issue.html
To access the special issue, visit the Traffic Injury Prevention website at
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gcpi20/13/sup1
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